Virginia Stage Company Hires Director

August 11, 1989|By DAVID NICHOLSON Staff Writer

NORFOLK — The Virginia Stage Company has selected a children's theater administrator in Louisville, Ky., as its new managing director.

Debra Humes, 32, who begins work Sept. 11, holds the same position at Stage One: The Louisville Children's Theatre. She will assume the position left by Dan Martin, who left in June to head a graduate arts program at the University of Akron in Ohio.

As managing director, she will work alongside artistic director Charles Towers and will be responsible for the administrative operation of the theater. The Virginia Stage Company will begin its 11th season in the fall.

"She's articulate, bright and a good fit for VSC," said board president Nancy Stanley. "She has been in Louisville for five years and has experience in marketing and long-range planning."

Stage One is an Equity theater with a $1.25 million budget, compared with the stage company's $1.8 million budget. The theater, which is the second largest children's theater in the country, produces student performances and weekend matinees for families from September through May.

"We developed the first joint Soviet-American production of live theater," said Humes. The partnership involved commissioning a Soviet playwright to write a play about world peace that was performed in both countries.

Humes, who came to Hampton Roads last week, said she was impressed with the company's "stunning" theater and its "dynamic, progressive" board of directors.

"The theater has a wonderful national reputation for being on the cutting edge of theater," she said.

Humes, who will be paid an annual salary of $40,000, earned a master's degree in arts administration from Indiana University in 1982, then went to Louisville as an intern. She also worked to raise funds for the Kentucky Center for the Arts, where Stage One now makes its home.